


Pride before the Fallbrook

by forgetcanon



Series: a rising tide raises all starships [2]
Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22111390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgetcanon/pseuds/forgetcanon
Summary: Sometimes, your local vicar needs a good yelling-at.
Relationships: Maximillian DeSoto & Parvati Holcomb, The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto
Series: a rising tide raises all starships [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591603
Comments: 11
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

Their captain was a very... physical person. Max didn't realize how much until she invited Felix into the crew. But once they struck up a rapport, Maisie knocked hips with the boy, put a hand on his shoulder when she stood behind him, occasionally hugged him, etcetera. It was the sort of thing Max was trained to notice as a vicar; knowing the ties in the community you served could help you spot people breaking their marriage contracts, or help root out dissident communities. 

After a few weeks, she started doing it with Parvati, as well, and Ellie often got an affectionate nudge or a straightened collar. Maisie and Nyoka hung all over each other after a few drinks. Even SAM got a pat whenever she passed. 

Max was the only member of the crew that retained his personal space. He was thankful of that, of course. He had never been an overly affectionate person, as Maisie was turning out to be. But it did not bode well for his place on the ship.

Well, once they reached Fallbrook, Max would be able to find a different ship if need be. He didn't like the thought. Margaret O'Shannon had turned out to be quite efficient as a leader. She was a source of intelligent discourse the likes of which he was unlikely to find anywhere outside the walls of OSI- and even then, their talks were not limited by what beliefs were heretical and what weren't. He even liked his room on the Unreliable- he had a store of bits set aside, but he wasn't so well padded that he could afford a single bunk room on many ships, even as a member of the crew. 

But he'd make do. All of those things were problems for  _ after _ Chaney got what was coming to him. 

And what was coming for him? Well, Max, of course. Hacking wasn't the only skill he'd picked up in prison, and while he may only be a novice at the art of inflicting pain, Max learned well under pressure. 

All of those years in Edgewater, tending to all those empty-eyed people with no ambition beyond their next drink or aetherwave episode or making the payment on their grave. Dealing with Reed Tobson was a torture all its own. Chaney would pay for every second of his time he'd wasted. 

He knew that he was champing at the bit. But he didn't much care. He was going to find what he needed in Fallbrook, one way or another. 

And he did find Chaney. And Maisie had followed him. Her presence had been a shock of cold water; her judgement had been a stab to his side. He was a man of reason. He wanted to follow the Plan, to uncover the equation. And in his rage, he had come  _ so _ close to destroying the only thread left to follow.

But he hadn't. He had been held back from the brink by a firm, furious fist. 

And now he followed Maisie back to the Unreliable, newly docked at the Fallbrook pad. She said nothing to him, did not even look back at him once- and he hadn't realized just how often she checked the position of her crew until he was ignored. By her sides, her hands clenched and unclenched. 

Oh, he was in for something. Max had seen her furious. She'd railed against the Board, both drunk and sober. She'd killed in cold blood, both in his presence and not. She could rationalize, as she did with what she had done to Edgewater. And she could also fall victim to her passions. 

Outside the ship, she finally stopped. Looked up at the ramp. Turned to face him.

"So," she said. Face cold. Eyes freezing holes in him. "Talk."

Well, if there was one thing a vicar could always do... "I... I am sorry, Captain. You are furious, and right to be so. I lied to you about Chaney, about my motivations. I tricked you into coming to Fallbrook so I could have my revenge."

She tilted her head to the side, the way she did during an argument, when she was considering a new tack to take against his current point. Was that a bad sign, or a good one? It was hard to say. But he knew that the only thing that could save him now was honesty. 

"I... I let my anger take hold of my reason. I am ashamed to admit that." The words were difficult to get out. Knowing that they would undoubtedly be used against him in the future. Knowing that Maisie relied on him to be a rational head, and now she knew that she could not trust that he would keep his cool. Knowing that he could and  _ had _ lied to her, for his own ends. Their trust was at an end. "If you had not stopped me..."

"You would have killed him," Maisie said. "In the middle of Fallbrook. You ask Malin where to find him; you go kill him; Sublight finds his body and asks me what the hell happened. I wonder how exactly you planned to get out of the next step, where I turn you over to Sublight's justice and Malin does whatever she does to people who break her law?"

Max couldn't say it. He stayed silent.

"You had no plan," Maisie said, for him. "You were going to, what, walk out onto Monarch and hope for the best? Hope his body was found  _ after _ we'd gone? I didn't see a shovel with you, vicar. Junior Inhumer Silas would be very disappointed."

"I likely could have paid Malin off," Max said, uncertain if  _ having _ a plan helped his case or hurt it. "She may dislike people who break her rules, but Chaney was hardly one of her own. If I made it convincing, I could have talked my way out of it."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound a lot like a solid plan." Maisie crossed her arms, leaned against the Unreliable's ramp. "That sounds like something you just came up with on the spot. So what I have right here, as Captain of a ship, is a crew member who betrays my trust, does something extremely stupid that would have ended with him either dead or in the bad graces of an ally I  _ really _ don't want to alienate, and did all of the above in a blind fucking rage without letting me in on any sort of plan at all."

Max frowned. "You've made your stance on murder extremely clear in the past. If I had brought this to you-" 

"-Yeah, I would have been pissed," Maisie said. "But I've killed in the past. You could have spun it. You could have included me in some way. Invited Chaney to the ship, or out into the wilds. Paid Malin off  _ first _ . Or you could have gone about it smarter on your own, and I would likely have never known if you took three fucking seconds to come up with a convincing lie. But you never did. Because you were so. Fucking. Fixated on killing a man who... what? Tricked you?"

"Yes," Max said. No doubt she objected morally to what he'd tried to do. But she knew how to argue, and she was going after him where it hurt. He had to fight to keep his voice steady. He hadn't felt this level of shame in years, and unlike the schoolyard taunting and the inter-clergy backstabbing he’d endured in the past, this was entirely deserved. 

"Give me one reason I shouldn't start tossing your belongings out the airlock."

Because you would never hurt a book, Max thought, but flippancy would not help him. 

"You have every right to do so," Max said. "You brought me onto your ship, offered me friendship, a place to belong- and I used you without thought. I don't know that I could have lived with myself, if I had followed through." 

A slow blink. He knew, of course, that Maisie could strong-arm when the situation called for it. He had never had those eyes turned on him like this. Normally they were so lively. Now they were cold and hard. 

"I beg your forgiveness. You have every right to refuse, but if you give me a second chance, I promise I will be nothing but truthful from this point on."

And he was silent. There was nothing left to do but wait for her verdict. He could feel himself balancing on a precipice, the way he had the day that he'd broached the notion of heretical texts openly to his bishop, the way he had when he'd bought himself passage to the nearest seminary school without his parents' knowledge. 

"If you ever lie to me again," Maisie finally said. "About  _ anything _ . I will dump you wherever we happen to be, and you'll be lucky if that's all."

"I understand," Max replied, and the ground returned. "Thank you, Captain."

She turned and walked up the ramp. Max followed her inside, but let her proceed up the ramp to her quarters alone. He needed a moment, before he encountered any of the other crew.

"Interesting," ADA said, and Max was so tightly wound he jumped. "I expected her to throw you out. Or punch you. Alex was fond of punching people he disagreed with."

"Maisie is not Hawthorne," Max replied, at a loss for what to say to that- and what kind of astrogator program commented on their captain's choices in such a way? "For which I am grateful." 

"Hm." And what kind of astrogator program sounded so... judgmental? "There's always time for her to change her mind." 


	2. Chapter 2

It was never addressed directly, but it did not take the crew long to realize that something was amiss. Perhaps it was that Maisie held an impromptu meeting on which jobs they should be prioritizing at the moment, and Max was not called out of his room to contribute or invited out on the excursions the captain made to Devil’s Peak or to the C&P Factory. Perhaps it was that Max avoided dinner that evening, and Maisie avoided breakfast the next morning, and somehow the two of them were never quite in the same room for over two days on what was not an extremely large ship. (Max suspected ADA’s assistance in this.)

Perhaps it was that the next time the two of them saw each other face-to-face, it was when Max happened to be passing through the galley on his way to the bathroom. He faltered when he saw the captain, sitting on the couch with a puzzle cube of a type that Max recognized from his days at seminary school. She was trying to teach Felix how the whole thing fit together.

Three days ago, Max would have wandered over to assist her. Today, her words died on her tongue as she glanced up at him.

There was a palpable pause. Felix looked between the two of them. “Uh…?”

Max continued on his way to the bathroom. As the door slid shut, he heard, “Boss, what the hell was th-“

When he finished up- taking more time than strictly necessary, not that anyone was shy about letting someone know when they needed the restroom on this vessel- the galley was empty. Maisie, Felix, and puzzle cube had vanished.

—

After dinner that night, there was a knock on his door. Max had expected one, sooner or later, Maisie either coming to inform him that he was forgiven or telling him that she’d changed her mind and that he was to exit the ship at his earliest convenience.

So when he called for her to enter, he was surprised to see Parvati, not the captain.

“Hi, vicar,” she said, toying with the rag stuffed in her belt. “How, uh. How you been?”

“Very well, Ms. Holcomb,” Max replied on autopilot. “And yourself?”

“Oh, uh, you know. There’s always something for me to be doing.” She awkwardly shied her way into his quarters and shut the door behind her. “It’s um. Look, it’s not really any of my business, but…”

Oh, dear law. She was here to try and… what? Make peace? She didn’t even know what the problem was. “But…?”

“It’s just.” She was still toying with that rag, eyes on everything in his quarters except for himself. “You and Maisie have been avoiding each other like you got plague, and all, and usually it’s the two of you that handle duties and supplies and such, and, I don’t mean anything when I say this but the two of you do fight a lot, but it hasn’t ever been so bad that you can’t even be in the same room for days like this…”

“The captain and I had a disagreement.” Even to his own ears it sounded lame. “I did something… ill-advised. I think it will take her some time to cool off.”

Parvati frowned, meeting his eyes for the first time today. “What’d you do?” She sounded suspicious, and rightly so. Damn.

Ms. Holcomb was not the most socially astute person. He could likely spin some sort of tale about one of their philosophical disagreements going much too far and, even if she did not believe it, she would be unlikely to press him further. But their captain was a brutally honest person when it came to affairs of the ship. If Parvati asked Maisie directly about what happened, it was more than likely that Maisie would tell her the truth of the matter.

Fuck. How much better would it sound coming from Max himself? Not much, but at least then no one could fault him for being a liar when the truth was revealed.

“Do you remember Bakonu’s journal? The text I sent Maisie and yourself to retrieve, back in Edgewater?”

“The French book,” Parvati confirmed. “Sure, I remember that. I thought you were looking for a translator here? At first that’s why I thought you weren’t going out with the others, but you were just kind of staying in your room, so…”

Shit. She had a sharper memory than he thought she would. “Ah, yes. That was, uh. That was a lie that I told the captain, back on the Groundbreaker. I told her that I knew of a translator here in Fallbrook-“ Explaining the details of tracking Chaney down would just bog down his explanation. “-but, truthfully, Chaney is no such thing. He’s the one who told me the location of the journal, back in prison. He failed to _share_ that it was in French, and therefore useless to me.”

Parvati frowned. “But if… he couldn’t translate it, why did you come all this way to find him?”

“Well, there wasn’t much keeping me in Edgewater-“ (Parvati’s expression pinched at that.) “But… truthfully, I was furious that he’d tricked me. I used all of my influence to get assigned to Edgewater and wasted two years trying to find a useless text that I couldn’t read. So…”

Parvati’s frown deepened. Then she looked at him in shock. “Max.”

“The captain stopped me from killing him, a few days ago,” Max said, hurrying to the conclusion of his summary. Best to spare her the details of exactly what kind of death he’d intended to make it. “She… I convinced her to let me stay, but.”

“But she’s still furious,” Parvati finished. “Uh, wow, okay. That’s… not what I expected.” She drew in a breath. “I really hope she doesn’t kick you off the ship, Max.”

Max blinked. “That… was not the reaction I expected from you, Ms. Holcomb.”

“I mean,” Parvati said, “It’s kind of… You didn’t _actually_ kill him, right? And it’s been kind of obvious you were furious about the whole thing, with the book. But you’ve also been, well. You’ve been trying to help us all. Giving us advice and things. Not really _good_ advice, if I’m being honest, but you’ve been getting better at, um. Being part of the crew and everything.”

Max sometimes used silence as a tactic to make the people confessing to him keep talking. Now he used it because he didn’t really know what to say to that.

“I mean,” Parvati repeated, “It’s just, with Ellie teasing you ‘cause you’re an easy mark, and you and Felix and Maisie all fighting so much, and me being so new to all this, and Nyoka… well, you kind of deserve it when Nyoka gives you a hard time, actually… I was kind of worried we were making you miserable and all this was leading up to you leaving us?”

“No, I’ve actually quite enjoyed being part of the crew,” Max said, and was surprised to find that it was true. “Even with… all that.”

She nodded decisively. “Good. Because I like having you around.”

“I… thank you, Ms. Holcomb. I… appreciate your skills as a mechanic. And I value you as a member of this crew.”

It was the formality he had grown familiar with, in seminary school. Parvati gave him a blank look before she smiled and said, “I think I get what you mean, vicar.”

Max chuckled ruefully. “I also appreciate your understanding and patience. Law knows this ship needs that more than anything else.”

Parvati smiled at the ground and flapped a hand bashfully, turning halfway towards the door before stopping and turning back. “So, anyway, almost forgot what I wanted to talk to you about, is that you and the captain are usually the ones to put together what supplies we need for the ship? And I’m running low on some essentials, and the kitchen’s getting a bit sparse, too, so…”

“Ah.” Max cleared his throat. “And since Maisie and I are not speaking, no one’s put together a shopping list. I’ll see to it first thing tomorrow, Ms. Holcomb.” If he wanted to stay part of the crew, the first step would be to act like it.

“Thanks, Max. I’ll let you read, now.”

“Have a pleasant evening, Ms. Holcomb.”

“You, too, Max.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: I have removed the previous chapter two and made it its own fic. It didn't... really fit here, anyway. In order to not remove any comments, I moved the old chapter three here instead of deleting the chapter wholesale.
> 
> So if some of the comments below don't make sense, it's because they now apply to a different fic entirely? Oops.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't until Max heard the scuff of boots that he looked back- Maisie hadn't gone with them. There was a slight sway to her walk as she came over, sitting next to him. 
> 
> "It's a nice night," she said, which was the first non-essential thing she'd said to him in days. 

Max didn't want to go back in, yet. The winds were still, which, for Monarch, meant that the sulfur smell was tolerable, and the stench of saltuna stayed down in the lower bay. The sun had set not long ago, but the concrete still held in some of its warmth. So he found a spot overlooking Stellar Bay and sat, legs dangling off the landing pad, and thought.

The elevator up to the landing pad creaked into motion, and Max looked over to verify that it was Nyoka, Ellie, and the Captain. It was- laughing, stumbling a little, Nyoka loudly insisting that whatever story she'd just told was "One Hundred Percent Certified Truth, Ellie! You don't believe me, I can show you the hole where I dumped the body!"

Ellie laughed. They headed inside.

It wasn't until Max heard the scuff of boots that he looked back- Maisie hadn't gone with them. There was a slight sway to her walk as she came over, sitting next to him.

"It's a nice night," she said, which was the first non-essential thing she'd said to him in days.

"For Monarch," Max replied, and Maisie snorted but nodded agreement. "Still, I must admit that Monarch has some pleasing sights, for all its other qualities."

"The shape of the mountains is certainly dramatic," Maisie agreed. "And I like how... porous a lot of it feels. Otherworldly. Like the sci-fi novels I read as a kid. It keeps hitting me, that this isn't _alien_ to most of you- You were born in this colony. Under this sky. This is all normal."

"Hardly," Max replied. "Most of us were born on Terra 2. Monarch's terraforming finished far later, and it was only occupied for a short time before it was abandoned. For many of the people living in Halcyon, Monarch is still quite alien."

Maisie waved a hand. "Well, fine. My point being, I like the landscape. And a lot of the plants. And even canids. Canids, I like.”

Max wasn’t certain where this was going, though he had to admit it was pleasant to sit with the Captain, a faint wind toying with the curls escaping her crown of braids, having a conversation veering dangerously towards friendly. Perhaps she was getting around to telling him he was forgiven?

“Even when they’re trying to tear chunks out of you?”

“Well, maybe not then.” Maisie sighed, leaning back on her palms. "I missed talking to you."

Max wasn't expecting the sudden swerve. "I... I must admit, I missed talking with you, as well."

"I was just so _angry_ ,"Maisie said. "Mostly _that_ I was so angry. I hadn't realized how much I actually liked you until you hauled off and did something so stupid. And I realized that it _mattered_ to me, how upset you were. And at the same time, how little you took me- and the rest of the crew- into consideration."

"I am becoming aware of that," Max said. He sighed. "And the fact that what I've done has driven a sizable wedge between us is only one of the reasons I regret it."

"You lost control of yourself," Maisie observed. "I know that I hate when I lose my calm, do something I don't mean. And you're one of the most controlled people I've ever _met_.”

It... wasn't untrue. “Yes. I used my anger to justify my reasoning, instead of the other way around. It was... sobering, to realize that."

Maisie snorted. "A lot of people do that, Max. You're far from the only person."

"No. But I thought I was better than that." Max looked over- Maisie's head was tipped back, eyes either closed or on the stars. "I'm glad that we are on speaking terms again."

"Me, too." Maisie heaved a sigh, and Max glanced away from her partially-unbuttoned shirt. "I'm sorry for freezing you out so completely, but I was... Angry. And I didn't want to let the crew in on what you'd done, so..."

"I told Parvati."

Maisie's head tilted forward, a question in her eyes. Max wasn't sure what she wanted to know, so he decided to cover his bases: "She came to me, asked what we were fighting about. I told her the truth. She was remarkably understanding, though I think it startled her to realize that I am capable of cold-blooded violence."

“Startled the hell out of me," Maisie muttered.

"She's a sweet person," Max continued. "I used to think it that was blindness, that she needed to wisen up and judge the world as it is, not as she wants it to be- it is often not a kind place. But if she were as 'wise' as I have encouraged her to be in the past, she would have rejected me. So would you, for that matter." Max sighed. "I fear I find myself at a bit of a loss, Captain."

“Are you admitting you could be wrong about something, Max?” Maisie teased. “That you have something to learn from us, instead of all of us just learning from you?”

“There’s no need to rub it in.”

Maisie smiled. “Thanks for doing the grocery run earlier. I’ve been wanting to run my plans for the raid on Cascadia by you, see if you had any thoughts.”

“Should we do that when you’re sober?”

“Ehh. Probably.” Maisie tipped her head back again, seeming content to simply sit by his side. There they remained until the concrete underneath them grew cool enough to be uncomfortable. Back inside the ship, Nyoka and Ellie had elected to continue their revelry rather than go to bed, and between the mildly tipsy Maisie and the absolutely hammered Nyoka and Ellie, Max got filled in (more or less) on what he had missed.

Arguing with a drunken Ellie over whether or not it was unreasonable to have ADA fly over Cascadia while the crew stood in the cargo hatch and took pot-shots at raiders a hundred feet below felt… right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY. Oh, this was annoying to write- I actually had all three chapters written for a while, but then I went and tried to shove [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23637832) in the middle, which meant I would have had to come up with a fourth chapter to balance it out... Whatever. It's done! At last! Finally!

**Author's Note:**

> Max... is awful at making plans. I know this, and I love him anyway.


End file.
